Getting smarter about crime

9:50 PM,
Nov. 30, 2013

Written by

Lock 'em up and throw away the key. It sounded good in the mid-'90s, during a drug-fueled spike in crime, and there was even some federal money available to states such as Mississippi that enacted tough "truth-in-sentencing" laws demanding long prison terms for violent and nonviolent criminals alike.

But we've been paying for it since.

Taxpayers spent $109 million to house about 11,000 inmates back then. Today, they're spending $361 million to house nearly 23,000 inmates. At one point around 2005, inmate population spiked to more than 31,000. ...